Cool technology helps students cheat more efficiently
Several months ago, I reported that 84% of seniors at a Catholic high school in New Orleans reported cheating and more than 50% described scenarios in which they believed cheating was justified.
Now, college students are using their cell phones to take photographs of their tests, then text messaging the answers to friends who have yet to take these tests.
Cheating has always gone on in schools, but I wonder if it has always gone on to the extent that it does now. Maybe. The penalties for cheating generally do not fit the crime, i.e., students are allowed to stay in the class or in the school. Cheating on tests is apparently in that same murky moral territory as sexually assaulting women, stealing to support your drug habit, and beating up people who make you angry--enough of your peers are willing to "let it go."
I have written before about the number of people who ask me to commit insurance fraud every year. When I explain to them that it is dishonest, they shrug. When I tell them it is a crime, they laugh. When I tell them I do not commit criminal acts and do not wish to lose my license, they shut up.
The line keeps getting moved. Just as the television idiot Soledad O'Brien was oh, so shocked to hear that sexual assault is a crime in the U.S.; just as the people of California did not appear the least bit reluctant to elect as their governor someone who had been accused of multiple sexual assaults, including one on a minor; just as the American people and their representatives do not seem to find anything strange about two stolen elections and an illegal war--cheating in school is just part of the way we do things.
The irony, of course, is that the right wing is screaming about morality all the time, while they support the most immoral government imaginable. The messages are no longer mixed; they have been obliterated into a fine dust that is choking the hell out of anyone who is still sane.
Now, college students are using their cell phones to take photographs of their tests, then text messaging the answers to friends who have yet to take these tests.
Cheating has always gone on in schools, but I wonder if it has always gone on to the extent that it does now. Maybe. The penalties for cheating generally do not fit the crime, i.e., students are allowed to stay in the class or in the school. Cheating on tests is apparently in that same murky moral territory as sexually assaulting women, stealing to support your drug habit, and beating up people who make you angry--enough of your peers are willing to "let it go."
I have written before about the number of people who ask me to commit insurance fraud every year. When I explain to them that it is dishonest, they shrug. When I tell them it is a crime, they laugh. When I tell them I do not commit criminal acts and do not wish to lose my license, they shut up.
The line keeps getting moved. Just as the television idiot Soledad O'Brien was oh, so shocked to hear that sexual assault is a crime in the U.S.; just as the people of California did not appear the least bit reluctant to elect as their governor someone who had been accused of multiple sexual assaults, including one on a minor; just as the American people and their representatives do not seem to find anything strange about two stolen elections and an illegal war--cheating in school is just part of the way we do things.
The irony, of course, is that the right wing is screaming about morality all the time, while they support the most immoral government imaginable. The messages are no longer mixed; they have been obliterated into a fine dust that is choking the hell out of anyone who is still sane.
posted by Diane at 4:58 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
This one hits home with me. I recently discovered that a student I had supported -- recommended for scholarships, for graduate school, helped in a number of ways through her undergarduate career -- had been cheating all that time: and that now, in her graduate career, she not only has been caught plagiarizing, but has been helped, by the influence of her daddy, to escape the penalty of plagiarism. She's still in graduate school. Still convincing everyone that my school turns out cheaters who don't have to pay for their crimes.
And -- beyond that? -- I've been finding out that more and more of my students see nothing wrong with plagiarism, or with cheating on exams, or on quizzes. Most of them are just like her, in other words.
These are not freshmen. They're junior and senior English majors. Students I *had* liked and trusted. All of this has shaken me badly.
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delagar, at
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